Failure is the essential ingredient that nobody talks about or acknowledges and everyone tries desperately and understandably to avoid. But as any inventor, creative or entrepreneur knows, great ideas are not born perfect but are forged in the furnace of trial and error. as Darwin showed, this is the simple but brutal algorithm of life. this seemingly random but amazingly productive cycle of mutation and natural selection, trial and error, has produced the whole of the abundant diversity of life on earth.
Does research assist or stifle innovation? This paper starts with an overview of the transfer of a revolutionary instant meal technology from Asia to Europe. A classically correct research programme but lacking interpretation and action by the client until too late. A market innovation opportunity lost and the moral is market research data remains just data until converted into knowledge and action by users. Years later lessons are learnt and failure turned into success - the apparently dead patient is resuscitated. Is this proof of the innovation credo of management guru Charles Handy: good ideas are not usually new ideas but old ideas resurrected (researched) at the right time? Or does this simply reinforce the need for marketing and research to work in harmony?